BW: Are you saying there is no Evil? C'mon!

BDL: Boy you really think I'm a dummy. Of course not! Evil exists in the special case of the physical world and personal consciousness; however, it does not exist in the Whole ( the Source) or Mind with a capital 'M'. And you can be sure Evil will continue to exist on our plane as long we think linearly, in terms of separate existence, and cognizable rationality; for, the greater our identification is with 'separate things', 'ourselves', 'ours', 'our group', 'our minds', the more its existence is insured; and, the more destructive everything will be. It is that belief in separateness that identification with the relative level of self and separate phenomena, that keeps expanding the suffering network.

BW: Hold it Boy! Let's take the cognition out of the picture; you have to admit the universe, even without cognition, is brutal. We all are pitifully aware that any minute an asteroid can wallop this planet, and wipe out most of the life on it; there are floods, draughts volcanoes, earthquakes, all kinds of natural catastrophes, and that's just talking about this planet. What about black holes sucking in everything in their vicinities, Galaxies eating up other Galaxies, Super Novas--what have you--destruction, nothing but destruction.

BDL: Words! Words! Words! You cannot separate the meanings that result in the word “brutal” from intelligent life, with its conceptual systems--and it's value systems--without painting a partial and very incomplete picture of the Universe!

You are neglecting the awesome beauty of the total field those events occur in, and are a part of. I know you are just being rhetorical; and I’m sure you know, all that destruction is a special case within the greatness of all of Creation. The laws, mathematics, and rules, which govern the universe, dictate that everything created has been caused by some set of locale catastrophes. For instance, from one point of view fire can be catastrophic, from another viewpoint it is a great blessing. Could creation occur without highly ordered, transmuting, destruction, and (so-called) accidents? Don't forget even freedom, and chance, are lawfully manifested.
Creation, (from our point of view) started with an AHA-Bang, which keeps banging away. That dualism of creation and destruction is actually a side effect of our thinking categories, and language, which can't handle the vastness of Holo-Reality. In language and thought categories, something that is one thing cannot also be its opposite; nevertheless, in greater Reality that's the case, like in the particle, wave riff..

BW: Oh very good! Do you realize you are laying down an ontological justification for the end justifying the means, and its bi-product fascism in this book, which I am authoring, no less. Thank you Boris! If I understand you correctly you are saying everything gets straightened out in the larger picture--even evil.

BDL: Pretty sharp BW, except your conclusion is untrue. In fact, we are talking about the highest form of freedom. Free will is a must for the occurrence of creative insights and the actions following from them. Creation, has created a cadre of creators, as if to expand it awareness. The feedback it gets from these infinitely numerous creative insights and actions will be ultimately embedded its implicate order; and are therefore involved in any new Aha!

In short the SOURCE was only limited by its own limitlessness. To transcend that it had to create limited intelligence within its own OMNI AWARENESS.

It seems to me also the Source appears to be attempting to expand itself within it own field, which by it very own nature dictates that expansion cannot not be finished, or depleted, in the sense that its evolution can not be depleted, because in fact it can only lead to further development or evolution

BW: Okay Boris, let's get away from this freedom, fascism trip! I'm trying to get at what your spiritual beliefs are. Like, do you believe in reincarnation, afterlife, heaven, or hell?

BDL: You are just trying to get me to trip out. If that's what you want that's alright with me. This should provide us with some fun. What I am about to tell your is an admixture made up of different measures of intuition, belief, and cognition along with their repertoires of conceptions--blah, blah, blah.

Reincarnation, afterlife, heaven, or hell makes for interesting speculation, but I can't take those issues very seriously, any more than I can take the Theory of Eveything seriously.
What is important for me is the spiritual richness of my life now, and that of humanity, in general. Listen Nardo, when our actions, and thoughts, are out of whack with Reality, suffering results, and that suffering generalizes outwards and inwards. Vice versa is also true: When we are in tune with Reality suffering is diminished and the ensuing state is generalized both inwards and outwards.

I find it most interesting that synonyms for suffering are prescriptions or antidotes for its cure. For instance, the synonyms for suffering in the sense of to bear pain is abide, brook, endure, tolerate, accept, admit, and receive; its synonyms in terms of experiencing pain, is to have, know, see, and sustain; Trying to hold-on to non-suffering, only increases it. Therefore, what you must do is act in harmony with the whole, while trying to optimize the richness of the illusional separate self. I say that because I believe the issues and states involved with reincarnation, afterlife, heaven, or hell are here now, right now, and we have never been separate from them, they are like different levels of consciousness.

BW: Maybe I can get you to focus a bit! Reincarnation, so...?

BDL: I had a thought about that recently, which I found kind of interesting. The Buddha (Gautama ) is supposed have recalled millions of lifetimes--or some very large number of them--anyway.

When thinking about the many possibilities that implies, I came up with the following: One possibility is when Buddha said 'in that lifetime I did this; or when he said, 'in that lifetime I did that; I have no doubt about the veracity of his accounts, but there are many kinds of truth I can attribute to any account..

For instance, we can also scrutinize what the Buddha meant by the word 'I'. In other words is that word restricted to the domain of Local Cause, and material reality, or does it refer to Holo-Reality where all patterns are interconnected, where materiality breaks down; and there are no separate things. If that is the case, it would be a true statement, because then all events, patterns, and states are interconnected. On that level of reality, all lives are one life. Hence, any lifetime tuned into and recalled is yours--at least in a an ontological sense. In states of meditation the Buddha may have tuned into the lifetimes of many different individuals--so vividly--that he had experienced then as personal recall. In that case, it would be correct to say, Buddha did recall his previous lives. However, they would not necessarily be his own lives from the standpoint of the special case we call our everyday reality: But it would be true from the general case of Holo-Reality.
I was just playing with the idea of Holo reality when I came up with that. Whether those thoughts have any reality is not very important.

I like that idea because it is exquisite in relationship to Buddhist thought, as I understand it. But I want to introduce what I have to say now with a reminder that I'm a Buddhist because I took refuge in the Buddha, that does not mean I have an accurate or true understanding of Buddhist thought. With that said—as I understand it—according to Buddhist thought there is no true or lasting or eternal self. Self is just certain patterns of thoughts, feelings, and tendencies towards acting in certain ways, that have become, associated, connected, organized, patterned and habituated, by the reinforcement of one's attachment to the idea of being a separate self and the belief that there are separate things or phenomena. As long as one is attached to those concepts, the Law of Karma is active.

There is another reason I think this is such an exquisite idea. Buddhism teaches that, you, we, all of us, are the Buddha. What I take that to mean is that whatever state was present when the Buddha was able to finally totally leave-go of his attachment to the concept of there being a separate self and separate things, that state was always there, but it was masked by attachment and ignorance. All sentient beings are born in that triadic state of being the Buddha in ingnorance with a propensity for attachment.
In short Buddhahood doesn't need to be achieved what has to be achieved is letting go of the concept of separateness and more importantly the belief in it, which is no mean task, but it seems to be achievable. Obviously self-reflecting intelligence is a necessary condition for that achievement to occur but it isn't a sufficient condition. That's just another way of saying you can be highly intelligent and remain unwise.

I imagine attaining Buddhahood is like taking off a pair of sunglasses, which you didn't know you were wearing and suddenly the world is entirely different. To experience the true nature of Reality you first have to become aware of the the fact the sunglasses are coloring your reality; then you have to break your attachment or heavy habit of wearing them; and, finally you must remove them. When you can take them off Reality becomes the same as it did for Gautama when he removed his sunglasses. One means of attaining that is to totally identify with the Buddha (or any other atavar) so that eventually you recall your life as the Atava, similarly, to how the Buddha did in his recall of other lives.

BW: How do you do that?

BDL: It's a multitudinous practice. But to answer you, one way is for you to do it, is moment-by-moment, imagining, feeling, and trying to behave as you think the Buddha, or Jesus, or Krishna, or Mohammed would behave in a very similar moments. In other words, you immerse your mind and heart in the Buddha. Doing so begins to modify your thoughts, feelings, and actions. You develop faith in the belief you are the Atavar (but so is everyone else). As your faith increases you, begin to experience differently. It as if the sunglasses you were unaware of wearing was also totally fogged up and you experienced everything through the distortion that implies; and then the sunglasses begin to defog through the heat of your spiritual passion.

At some point the individual practitioner realizes, there was good reason for the Buddha to follow practices of watching his mind since it easy to fall into mental habits. For example, the ways you immerse yourself in the Buddha can become highly habitualized, which means you become attached to those ways, and its rewards rather then immersing you mind, heart and actions in the Buddha and letting what ensues ensue. In this case maybe the phrase “watch out” should by changed to “watch in”! You can easily change from a person taking refuge in the Buddha to a person attached to the ways he takes refuge in the Buddha, which leads to the birth of spiritual kitsch. Kitch and Habit inhabit the same realm.

It's an ironic situation. At the beginning, your immersion in the Buddha or Atavar results in the breaking up of old stable habit formations. That leads to the start of your glasses defogging, but then, both the means to that state, and the attachment to it, develops itself into another set of habit formations that rigidify you, so that your glasses stop defogging, or begin to fog up again.

In my own experience, every now and then my lenses seem to clear up a little bit more now and again, after being a little foggier for a period. As my imaginary glasses clear up, my compassion seems to grow, and I am generally less fearful. My negative karma still plays itself out but I have become less fearful when hit with the boomerang effect of negative karma.

We all know some people who were born again into Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Their vitality and growth on many levels was definitely visible at first. They seemed to be glowing.
That's usually the case with people who become extremely immersed and identified with Buddha, Jesus, G-d, Krishna or Mohammed. However, if you were to follow a large number of them longitudinally, after a while, you will find many of them adhere to their religious and spiritual practices, without spirit, and with plenty of ego.
Instead of inviting others to share their joy and enthusiasm, many of them try to coerce, threaten, and manipulate those they feel are on the wrong path, all in the name of their Savior, Avatar, or Prophet. Many of those people appear to others as feeling superior to those not on their path, while claiming they pity and suffer for them. Simultaneously they preach humbleness even when they don't seem to be humble. Self-righteousness, seems to become another survival techniques for these well intended souls. They start by feeling guided, and end up by trying to be the guide. Being with them feels like interacting with religiously programmed people.
Many others are neither controlling, nor martyrs. Instead, they just don't seem to be growing very much considering the time they have put into their spiritual practices. Nevertheless, they talk and act a good game, and most of them are sincere. Maybe they are just slow developers. Speaking of talking and acting a good game, I'm likely one of those latter types.

However, there are also those, who manifest their effort and imagination. Many of them serve others in a large way in order to reduce suffering; and still others do it with every contact they make. They are compassionate without making a big deal out of it, and yet it is visible, if visible is the right word. They are grounded and self-confidant, have a good sense of humor and are open. They show no signs of feeling superior to anyone; although, they may feel more fortunate then them, and are thankful for that. Their lives are examples so they don't have to teach unless that becomes their calling. Above all, they are extremely confident and compassionate.

BW: …. So is that it with reincarnation, are we through?

Is Boris through with the discussing reincarnation? What can he possible be getting into next…..Check into HodgepodgeBlodge next week and find out for your self…

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